Campaigns wield editing power over press

7/16/12 7:57 AM EDT

The New York Times' Jeremy Peters reports this morning on the Obama and Romney campaigns' (largely successful) efforts to edit their own quotes:

Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree. After the interviews, they review their notes, check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest sound bites for review.

The verdict from the campaign — an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script — is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message.

The push and pull over what is on the record is one of journalism’s perennial battles. But those negotiations typically took place case by case, free from the red pens of press minders. Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations.

This is the sort of thing that frustrates the hell out of reporters, and will almost certainly frustrate readers who were unaware of the fact that it has practically becomes status quo. And it's not just true of campaigns: "From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position," Peters writes.